Dear DNALounge, This is to notify you that we have received a privacy complaint from an individual regarding your content: ------------------------------------------------------------- Video URLs:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHBkGwOBCaY The information reported as violating privacy is at 1:40-1:41 ------------------------------------------------------------- We would like to give you an opportunity to review the content in question and remove any personal information that may be used to uniquely identify or contact the complainant. You have 48 hours to take action on the complaint. If you remove the alleged violation from the site within the 48 hours, the complaint filed will then be closed. If the potential privacy violation remains on the site after 48 hours, the complaint will be reviewed by the YouTube Team and may be removed pursuant to our Privacy Guidelines (http://www.youtube.com/t/privacy_guidelines). For content to be considered for removal, an individual must be uniquely identifiable by image, voice, full name, Social Security number, bank account number or contact information (e.g., home address, email address). Examples that would not violate our privacy guidelines include gamer tags, avatar names, and address information in which the individual is not named. We also take public interest, newsworthiness, and consent into account when determining if content should be removed for a privacy violation. If the alleged violation is located within the video itself, you may have to remove the video completely. If someone's full name or other personal information is listed within the title, description, or tags of your video, you can edit this by going to My Videos and clicking the Edit button on the reported video. Making a video private is not an appropriate method of editing, as the status can be changed from private to public at any time. Because they can be turned off at any time, annotations are also not considered an acceptable solution. We're committed to protecting our users and hope you understand the importance of respecting others' privacy. When uploading videos in the future, please remember not to post someone else's image or personal information without their consent. For more information, please review our Privacy Guidelineshttp://www.youtube.com/t/privacy_guidelines.Regards,

This was filmed at a nightclub, open to the public, with no expectation of privacy. It shows hundreds of people dancing in public. No single person is visible for more than two or three seconds.

In addition, anyone entering the club is clearly presented with this notice at the door:

By entering the premises, you hereby grant a license and permission to DNA Lounge or its designees, and its employees, successors, assignees, licensees and agents, to utilize your appearance, image, voice and likeness, in perpetuity, throughout the world in any and all manner and form and format of media, now known or hereafter devised, including but not limited to recordings, broadcasts or webcasts of the event that you are attending.

You release DNA Lounge and its designees, and each of their employees, successors, assignees, licensees and agents from and against any and all claims for invasion of rights of publicity, privacy, defamation, or other claims or causes of action arising out of the production, reproduction, distribution, broadcast, exhibition or other exploitation of the event you are attending.

We have removed the material in question for a privacy violation, pursuant to our Community Guidelines.

It may take some time for video search results and thumbnail images to disappear from the site. Typically, this should not take more than a couple of days. Please be patient and be assured that the video is no longer viewable.

Fuck you very much, Google. Your policies are bullshit and your resolution protocol is worthless.

But at least they thanked me for my email!

The original video is viewable on Vimeo. Maybe it's time to switch to Vimeo for all of my online video usage, since apparently Youtube can't be trusted.

The takedown notice said the "violation" was from 1:40-1:41. The edits in this video are so fast that that two second period covers three edits! Google won't tell you who your accuser is, but assuming they didn't just make up those numbers, maybe the complainer is one of these people:

It looks like Google considers "their face being visible" to be a privacy violation regardless of what agreement they may or may not have with you. And that Youtube policy is, thus, "fuck getting involved, we have a complaint from someone whose face really is there, so remove the face or get lost".

I believe what YouTube did is the right thing. You use their service, so you gotta play by theirs rule. You cannot apply your rule anywhere but your own land, can you?
If some other clubs come and ask you to kick your customers out because they break theirs rule, which nothing to do with you and/or your club, will you kick them out?

The complainant used jwz's service, why does she not have to play by his rules ? You can apply rules like he does just as he does across the world, as the majority of venues and events do, it's the only sane way for them to be able to demonstrate their business functioning in publicity material.

I've actually had a more consistent user experience with vimeo than I have Youtube, as far as videos loading and/or playing correctly. I use them for hosting my various videos because their quality is usually better than Youtube's. Are you doing something weird?

I've had occasionally pretty bad loading experiences as a user, could as well be due to my being-in-europe thing and to them not having (enough) european mirrors.

While on slow/outdated computers in practice I couldn't gain access to vimeo videos, all the while youtube ran smoothly. Part of that is due to the degrading perfomances of flash in the latter years.

There is a chance the actual video format you upload in is relevant to playing performance in vimeo (while it practically isn't on youtube) that could explain why you (as a careful uploader) never encountered any problem.

Youtube always relied too much on throwing problems over the crowdsource fence and not caring what happened. This has made it very susceptible to abuse. When I was still at G I tried a couple times to help resolve a ridiculous situation like this, and all I got back was, "we don't care" and "we want to spend zero resources on this."

Buying youtube was a mistake .. maybe now not the worst mistake, but up in the top few.

I happened to be having dinner with Google's privacy head a week or so ago. She looked pretty exhausted.

Yeah, it sucks from a common sense point of view, but I can see why they do it. They get scrutiny on a level that not even Microsoft had to ever put up with, and the governmental threats they receive drive them to err on the side of notional privacy instead of reasonable privacy, lest some bureaucrat or politician more or less bans them from existing in any useful form.

My money's on "chick with some guy". Hopefully someone will reddit or slashdot this (or whatever it is the kids use these days), and it will be reposted far and wide. Karma demands it.

It's fascinating & indicative that you can't confront your accuser in any way, shape or form. The accusation alone is enough to get you sanctioned —shades of Stalin's USSR and the Salem Witch Trials! Of course, there are good corporate reasons, as noted above, why YouTube doesn't want to deal the legal overhead at all.

Heh. The fact remains that you have no practical redress against the accusation. It's like when an ISP gets a DMCA take-down notice; they just cut you off at the knees despite the DMCA's own safe harbour provision because it's in their best interests to do so & less work for them. Which is why I've had to explain "safe harbour" to help desk morons following a script, and the ISP doesn't respond itself with "safe harbour" to any complaints. They simply can't be bothered.

I do nightlife photo work for a living. Most venues I work with have the same policy DNA does. And if you think about it, it's pretty much on the money. Whether it's me with my SLR, guys and girls with their iPhone cameras, or even the clubs own security and/or broadcast systems, your image is acquired probably from the minute you get within range of the door.

It might be Youtube's turf, but they're not following their own policy as stated. If their policy is "We'll pull whatever we want, when we want..." then it should say that up front.

Oh, and agreed 100% on the commenter who said it was probably someone who was cheating on their significant other. One of the pet peeves of any decent nightlife shooter anywhere is this exact thing. People come up to us and ask for photos and then ask if we can "not publish/delete" because they're not supposed to be out with the other person. I won't publish out of common courtesy, but some people will out of spite, and well, in that case it's tough shit.

You don't want random people taking photos of it? Don't do it in front of random people.

Jamie says "the supposed opportunity to dispute this" but the mail never offers any such opportunity. Youtube's behaviour is completely what they said. Jamie's mistake was in assuming that they'd forgotten to mention how to say "No". But they didn't forget, there isn't a way. If there's any video anywhere on Youtube that shows someone who looks like you, Youtube will take it down at your request. If someone doesn't want their Youtube videos removed, they need to remove all recognisable images of people.

This achieves Google's goal of minimising the cost to run Youtube, and it doesn't really get in the way of anyone's freedom of expression since Google also don't care to stop people from constantly uploading the same "privacy violating" video. The complainant will click the moan button, a script will automatically send email, it waits a little while, it deletes the video, someone uploads a new one. Rinse and repeat.